medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Hello everyone,
I have been asked by a friend to help describe a short
manuscript that contains several interesting diagrams on
calculating easter. I am completely unfamiliar with this form
of computation. I have tried looking up several books on
this, but I have had a hard time finding a basic text that
explains the parts of each table except for a book of hours.
The current manuscript, in a private collection, has both
table and circular computations. My hope is that if I can
figure out the tables, then I might be able to figure out the
circular diagrams. Although be warned I might have to post
those too. The good news is, if I can figure all of them out
I am going to ask if I can put them all online as a teaching aid.
I have uploaded one of the images from the primary tables (see
below). These are for the months January and February. There
are six columns.
1) number of days in the month
2) golden numbers
3) ????
4) dominical letters
5) ????
6) "sign or symbol letters"
I know how the 1st, 2nd, and 4th columns work. However, the
3rd, 5th, and 6th column are completely incomprehensible.
Column six seems to provide letters for the days of the month
in column one. I am not sure. If so, what is the rationale?
Column five is incredibly puzzling as it seems to be spelling
out a sentence, with a couple of letters in each square of the
table.
I have no idea what three is, but it seems to be the hours of
the day. But did they the compute the hours of the day in 24
hours, or in 12?
Here is the file (sorry for the sidways view). For those with
dialup (like me) be warned as it is very large.
http://home.uchicago.edu/~dkgullo/EasterCalcTable.jpg
Thank you for all your help
Daniel
----------------------------
Daniel K. Gullo
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of History
1317 E. Madison Park
Apt. 1
Chicago, IL 60615
http://home.uchicago.edu/~dkgullo
773-536-3401 (home)
773-592-6172 (cell)
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